Is Madison County really 'the biggest underdog in the history of football' vs. University School

Steve GortenSun Sentinel

Madison County coach Mike Coe’s team lost last year’s Class 3A state football championship to American Heritage-Delray in a rout, 30-3.

This year, Coe noted Monday, they’ll “probably be the biggest underdog in the history of football” against University School in the championship game Saturday.

Granted, University is coming off a 42-0 state semifinal spanking of Clearwater Central Catholic, in which there was a mercy-rule running clock for most of the second half. Still, that’s the sort of serious sandbagging that would make Lou Holtz proud.

Coe added that aside from Manatee, which he’s watched on TV a few times this season, University is as good physically and athletically as any team he’s seen in 19 years of coaching.

“When you watch film on any team, you try to find a weakness. I haven’t found one yet with those guys,” Coe said of the Suns. “When you have that many great players, sometimes egos tend to get in the way.

“But when you watch them, they play extremely hard, they’re well coached and they’ve got great players everywhere on both sides of the football.

“But like I told our kids, I’d rather be there than not. We have nothing to lose. We’ll probably be the biggest underdog in the history of football come Saturday. But that’s all well and fine. We’re just going to go try to play play our best, play our hardest, play our game and let the chips fall where they may.”

Coe said his team was “overwhelmed” by the magnitude of the state championship game last season, and that this time around “I just think we’ll play a lot looser and not worry about the result.”

Clearly, he was trying to eliminate what little pressure there may be on his players by building up University as a larger-than-life football team. The Suns aren’t quite as incredible as Coe would have you believe, but they are undoubtedly a dominant force not unlike Heritage-Delray last year.

Coe described University running back Jordan Scarlett as “scary good,” while noting that “most spread teams don’t have that component” and “he’s their best player.”

The 2012 University School and 2011 Heritage-Delray teams have similar traits, Coe said.

“I’ll tell you where people miss the boat – and the same thing with Heritage last year – is that University is good up front on both sides. You can have all that skill you want to out there, but they are good up front,” Coe said.

“[Quarterback Mike White’s] very rarely hit, and [Scarlett] very rarely makes a cut until he’s past the line of scrimmage. And then up front on defense, they’re very, very active, use their hands well, play extremely hard. That’s where you win or lose football games and most people just want to talk about the stats.”

It won’t help that Madison County, which played last year’s championship game without its starting quarterback, has a team that’s “beat up pretty bad” from injuries heading into this year’s title game.